- SCOTUS to hear Guam hazardous waste explosions case
Source: Yahoo! News
“The U.S. Supreme Court agreed on Monday to hear a bid by President Donald Trump’s administration to dismiss a challenge by environmentalists to the U.S. Air Force’s practice of detonating hazardous waste explosives on a beach in Guam. The justices agreed to hear the Justice Department’s appeal of a lower court’s ruling allowing a lawsuit pursued by the environmental groups Prutehi Guahan and Earthjustice …. Since 1982, the Air Force has disposed of hazardous munitions such as tear gas and propellants on Tarague Beach, a restricted-access location in Guam, a U.S. territory roughly 3,800 miles (6,100 km) from Hawaii that acts as an anchor for military operations in the Western Pacific. Tarague Beach serves as a nesting habitat for the endangered turtles and sits above an aquifer that provides more than 80% of the island’s population with drinking water.” (03/09/26)
https://www.yahoo.com/news/articles/us-supreme-court-hear-guam-173224946.html
- NPR Politics Podcast, 03/09/26
Source: National Public Radio [US state media]
“Poll: Most Americans oppose war in Iran, but most Republicans support it.” (03/09/26)
- Congressional Democrats whine about people in another country getting oil from yet a third country
Source: CNBC
“Congressional Democrats are demanding that the Trump administration immediately reverse a sanctions waiver allowing Indian refiners to purchase Russian oil as the Iran war wreaks havoc on global energy markets. ‘Your recent decision to provide a 30-day waiver is dangerous, self-defeating, and indefensible,’ Rep. Sam Liccardo, D-Calif., and Sen. Ruben Gallego, D-Ariz., wrote in a letter Monday to Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, which was shared exclusively with CNBC. ‘This waiver constitutes an inexplicable act of material benefit to the enemy.’ The Treasury Department last week issued a temporary 30-day sanctions carve-out to allow India to buy Russian oil, an effort to ease skyrocketing oil prices caused by the war and the traffic standstill at the Strait of Hormuz.” [editor’s note: In what universe is it Liccardo’s, Gallego’s, or the US government’s business where Indian customers get their oil from? – TLK] (03/09/26)
https://www.cnbc.com/2026/03/09/bessent-russian-oil-sales-india.html
- Norway: Police release images of Oslo US embassy explosion suspect
Source: BBC News [UK State Media]
“Police in Norway have released pictures of a suspect linked to an explosion outside the US’s embassy in Norway’s capital Oslo on Sunday. Two heavily pixelated images taken from surveillance footage show a person with their face concealed, dressed in dark clothing and carrying a backpack. Police said in a statement on Monday that their investigation had so far showed the explosion was caused by an improvised device that was placed at the building’s entrance. The blast caused minor damage and no injuries were reported. Police previously said it was possible the explosion was an act of terrorism. They said in their latest update that they had no developments on the attacker’s motive. As well as the images, investigators were also examining a video published on Google Maps around the time of the incident, police said.” (03/09/26)
- Travelers encounter long waits at some airports as DHS shutdown affects groper checkpoints
Source: San Diego Union-Tribune
“Travelers complained of long waits Sunday — lasting hours in some cases — at security checkpoints at airports in Houston and New Orleans, which officials blamed on a government shutdown of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.” [editor’s note: There’s an easy fix for that — “standing in a line to get groped has been suspended until further notice, just go to your gate and board your flight” – TLK] (03/09/26)
https://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/2026/03/09/dhs-shutdown-airport-security/
- American Gerontocracy
Source: Law & Liberty
by Aidan Grogan“America’s Boomers have established a bipartisan gerontocracy — a political and economic system under the leadership of the elderly. They take care of their own and make younger Americans foot the bill for their longer and more luxurious retirements. It’s obviously unfair, but no one on either side of the political aisle seems inclined to do anything about it. The federal government has run a budget deficit for 24 consecutive years as the gerontocracy tightened its grip on power. It’s particularly worrisome given that the political influence of senior citizens is likely to grow as the population ages, even as the economics of America’s gerontocracy become more and more unsustainable.” (03/09/26)
- Expecting Iran to Unconditionally Surrender Is a Fool’s Errand
Source: Persuasion
by Francis Fukuyama“Of the many questionable decisions Donald Trump has made with regard to Iran, one of the strangest was his declaration last Friday that the United States would demand ‘unconditional surrender’ from Tehran. When Trump launched the attack with Prime Minister Netanyahu of Israel, he was obviously hoping for a quick victory, something like the outcome he achieved when he snatched Nicolás Maduro of Venezuela in January. But the war expanded across the Middle East … Normally, a smart leader in such a situation would try to lower expectations and declare an achievable objective in the war, such as degrading the better part of Iran’s ability to strike targets with ballistic missiles and drones. This would offer an opportunity for Trump to declare victory and disengage. Instead, Trump did the opposite. The new objective of unconditional surrender suddenly raised the goalposts to an unachievable height.” (03/09/26)
https://www.persuasion.community/p/iran-probably-wont-surrender
- Why Healthcare Is So Expensive in America, and What to Do About It
Source: Cato Institute
by Veronique de Rugy“America’s healthcare system consistently ranks as the most expensive in the developed world. It’s not, as some politicians claim, expensive because markets have failed. It’s expensive because the market has been repeatedly blocked from succeeding. Until we’re honest about that, any potential reforms will only address symptoms while ignoring the disease. The healthcare market is hindered in many ways, but the core structural problem is simple: The person receiving care is almost never the person actually paying for it.” (03/09/26)
https://www.cato.org/commentary/why-healthcare-so-expensive-america-what-do-about-it
- As I Predicted (Feared) in Iran
Source: Coyote Blog
by Warren Meyer“Back in the first heady days of the attacks on Iran I cautioned that it was relatively easy to kill a few leaders and bomb a bunch of stuff, but harder to understand how a liberal democracy was to magically eventuate in Iran. The US has a history of removing one bad leader and getting only something worse afterwards (remember Diem? Gaddafi?). One problem is that after 40 years of rule, the totalitarian government there is strong and deeply entrenched, and the opposition (while it certainly exists) does not seem to have leadership, plans, or coherent organization. Would killing Hitler in 1943 or Stalin in 1937 have incited a successful revolution? Almost certainly not — not because they were loved but because their party’s instruments of control were strong and the opposition was smashed flat.” (03/09/26)
https://coyoteblog.com/coyote_blog/2026/03/as-i-predicted-feared-in-iran.html
- 250 Years Later, The Wealth of Nations Still Has Lessons To Offer the Political Class
Source: Reason
by JD Tuccille“Few books can be said to have withstood the test of time 250 years later, but Adam Smith’s An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations (usually shortened to The Wealth of Nations), published for the first time in 1776, certainly has. At a time when even the governments of nominally free countries once again dabble with guiding economies, and the president of the United States rails against trade as if it’s a team sport where some countries are winners and others are losers, Smith’s book reminds us that unfettered societies are both good and productive, and that free trade produces the best outcomes for all.” (03/09/26)
- Planet Palantir: The Brave New War Machine
Source: TomDispatch
by Janet Abou-Elias & William D. Hartung“‘I love the idea of getting a drone and having light fentanyl-laced urine spraying on analysts that tried to screw us’, said Alex Karp, the CEO of the emerging military tech firm Palantir. Far from an offhand outburst, his statement reflects a broader ethos taking hold in Silicon Valley’s military-tech sector, one that treats coercion as innovation, cruelty as candor, and the unchecked application of technological power as both inevitable and desirable. Karp loves verbal combat as much as he likes running a firm that makes high-tech weaponry. His company has helped Israel increase the pace at which it has bombed and slaughtered Palestinians in Gaza, and its technology has helped ICE accelerate deportations, while also helping locate and identify demonstrators in Minneapolis. Not only is Karp unapologetic about the damage done by his company’s products, he openly revels in it.” (03/08/26)
- Trump’s Political Strategy on Iran Is Brilliant
Source: Future of Freedom Foundation
by Jacob G Hornberger“Political commentators are saying that President Trump has made a big political mistake by promoting many justifications for his war on Iran. … I say that President Trump showed political brilliance in coming up with an extremely large number of justifications for his war. … it gives his MAGA supporters a justification that is certain to satisfy all of them. In other words, if he had come up with only one or two justifications, there is a good possibility that a large percentage of MAGA men would not find them to be persuasive. Oh, to be sure, they would still be supportive, given their blind, loyal, patriotic, subservient, and obsequious support of whatever Trump says or does, but it might not be as enthusiastic as Trump would like it.” (03/09/26)
https://www.fff.org/2026/03/09/trumps-political-strategy-on-iran-is-brilliant/
- There is No Truth in This
Source: Underthrow
by Max Borders“William Tecumseh Sherman said, ‘War is hell.’ And he was right, though I can’t remember if he said that before or after torching everything he could on his march to the sea. Of the latest military adventure, enlightened commenters sit in their easy chairs and slap cheap bumper-sticker assessments on the Web for all the world to see. They baptize themselves in their own rectitude, having neither dodged a bullet in Fallujah nor watched a buddy’s legs get blown off by a roadside IED. Nor have they had to live a life of conformity forced by zealots pretending to believe in a religion they never converted to. They never had to be beaten and raped for showing their hair, or singing an ancient song, or dancing an ancient dance.” (03/09/26)
- What We Do Tells Us Who We Are
Source: Our Future
by Sulma Arias“I’m a practical person. Ideas matter, but they only come to life when we put them into practice. So if you haven’t heard from me recently, it’s because I’ve been out there, around the country, putting the Organizing Revival into practice on the ground with People’s Action organizers and our growing family of allies. And I’ve been cooking! Yes, I mean that literally. As I’ve met with different people, we’ve been making chiles rellenos, one of my most cherished dishes! Cooking and eating together has become an important part of these strategic gatherings, as we commit to move forward together into an uncertain landscape that holds dark but certain challenges. I’ll share more about this, and my recipe, in a bit. But first, I want to talk about the moment we’re in. I recently wrote an article in Convergence Magazine that I hope you’ve seen.” (03/09/26)
https://ourfuture.org/20260308/what-we-do-tells-us-who-we-are
- Closing the Door to New Americans
Source: Reason
by Matt Welch“In October 2025, the Trump administration slammed the door shut to the world’s most miserable, slashing the annual cap of refugee intake by 94 percent, to an all-time low of 7,500. Even the COVID-19 years of 2020–2021 averaged more, at 11,600, than this cap would allow. In the year that Reagan left office, the U.S. brought in more than 107,000 refugees. America is choking off demand for refugees at a time when the planet has been jacking up supply.” (for publication 04/26)
https://reason.com/2026/03/09/closing-the-door-to-new-americans/
- The Children’s Iran War
Source: The American Conservative
by Ben Sixsmith“A long-running theme in the right-wing critique of progressive politics in the 2010s was mockery of its reliance on fantasy fiction. Left-leaning commentators appeared to have been trapped within the reference points of the novels of their childhood. Harry Potter was especially prominent in left-wing arguments. … we critics of ‘social justice’ activism found this discourse entertaining. We mocked its Manichaean vision of the world, in which everyone was either a goodie or a baddie. We made fun of its at least implicit reliance on magic. ‘Read another book’ was a popular jibe. This was more than legitimate. Still, as the American-Israeli war against Iran continues, I can’t help feeling that some people on the right were laughing without thinking. Now, some right-wing figures seem to be viewing the world through the lens of childish fiction. Prowar rhetoric is seething with cheap comparisons to popular culture.” (03/09/26)
https://www.theamericanconservative.com/the-childrens-iran-war/
- Why “pursuit of happiness”remains the Declaration of Independence’s most novel phrase
Source: New York Post
by Steven F Hayward“The primary obligation of any government, the Declaration of Independence tells us in its famous second paragraph, is the ‘safety and happiness’ of its citizens. The necessity of securing safety is obvious (except to progressive politicians in big blue cities, who are often diffident about crime and disorder), but it is thought something of a novelty of the Declaration to set out ‘the pursuit of happiness’ as one of the central ‘inalienable rights’, along with life and liberty. It is well established that Thomas Jefferson and his collaborators in writing the Declaration (John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, Roger Sherman and Robert Livingston) followed the language and logic of John Locke’s ‘Second Treatise of Government’. But Locke and other social-contract theorists of the era typically spoke of the inalienable natural rights to ‘life, liberty and property’, or ‘life, liberty and estate.’?” (03/08/26)
https://nypost.com/2026/03/08/us-news/the-pursuit-of-happiness-remains-a-novel-moment-in-us-history/
- If MAGA’s the Name, Then Chaos is the Game
Source: CounterPunch
by George Ochenski“First Trump claimed an attack by Iran was ‘imminent’ — which has been proved false even by his own intelligence agencies. Then it was necessary to ‘take out’ Iran’s nuclear capability, which even those with short memories will recall he claimed to have ‘obliterated’ in last year’s Israel-U.S. attack on Iran. Then it was for regime change to get rid of what he dubbed “the lunatic” 87-year old ruler. But then it was we had to attack because Israel was going to attack first — and being the stalwart ally in Israel’s Gaza genocide, our Middle East assets would also be attacked. MAGA politicians can’t even agree if it’s a war.” (03/09/26)
https://www.counterpunch.org/2026/03/09/if-magas-the-name-then-chaos-is-the-game/
- Inexcusable Incompetence
Source: The Contrarian
by Jennifer Rubin“‘Everyone saw this coming except the President.’ An ‘unmitigated disaster of epic proportions.’ Were these the words from Democrats decrying Donald Trump for failing to plan to evacuate hundreds of thousands of civilians under a blizzard of retaliatory fire raining down on the Gulf States? No, those were Republicans excoriating former President Joe Biden for the botched 2021 exit from Afghanistan. Back then, Rep. Steve Scalise (R-LA) thundered, ‘It’s a very dire situation when you see the United States Embassy being evacuated.’ Fast forward to last week. The Trump regime closed down three of our embassies (Saudi Arabia, Lebanon, and Kuwait), abandoning U.S. citizens in those countries. Trump’s minions failed to consider advanced planning to evacuate Americans from the region, leaving them to fend for themselves in places where missiles are flying and buildings are ablaze.” (03/09/26)
- Call You This Liberty?
Source: Liberal Currents
by Guillaume AW Attia“When the Middle East journalist Omid Memariam was arrested by the Iranian government, his interrogators intentionally chose not to wear masks in order to convey both the legitimacy of the government and the propriety of the interrogation. ‘Once a mask is involved,’ Memariam explains, ‘people understand it as a sign of weakness, that the government has something to hide.’ With the deaths of Renee Good and Alex Pretti, it is hard to see how the government can convince large portions of the American public that they do not have something to hide. This raises a core issue at the heart of the mask discussion: the erosion of certain basic and long-standing moral and legal norms in America.” (03/09/26)
- Missiles, Memes, and Masculinity: When the White House Turns War Into Entertainment
Source: Common Dreams
by Rob Okun“A week into Trump’s illegal war against Iran, the White House released a 42-second video on X, featuring movie scenes spliced with real military footage of strikes in Iran, promising ‘justice, the American way’. Rather than sober statements about national security or the grim human realities of war, the March 5 video resembled a movie trailer. The clips stitched together real footage of missile strikes with pop-culture heroes: Russell Crowe in Gladiator, Tom Cruise in Top Gun: Maverick, Robert Downey Jr.’s Iron Man, Keanu Reeves’ relentless assassin in the John Wick films. Even SpongeBob SquarePants made an appearance. The video was immediately mocked for reflecting the militaristic fantasies of teenage boys (see Hegseth, Pete), more than that of the US starting a war. The editing followed a familiar formula: a heroic movie quote, a dramatic cut to real explosions, then a video-game style victory sound. War, apparently, has become content.” (03/09/26)
https://www.commondreams.org/opinion/white-house-war-meme-video
- Reason Roundtable, 03/09/26
Source: Reason
“Will the War in Iran Crash the Global Economy?” (03/09/26)
https://reason.com/podcast/2026/03/09/will-the-war-in-iran-crash-the-global-economy/
- Ron Paul Liberty Report, 03/09/26
Source: Ron Paul Liberty Report
“Trump Ignored Intel Warning On Iran Attack!” (03/09/26)
- Show-Me Institute Podcast, 03/09/26
Source: Show-Me Institute
“Income Tax Elimination, Early Literacy Bills, and Data Centers in Missouri.” (03/09/26)
- Gracearchy with Jim Babka, episode 155
Source: Gracearchy with Jim Babka
“The MAGA Case for Open Immigration by Ammon Bundy.” (03/09/26)
- Finding Freedom, 03/09/26
Source: Lions of Liberty
“The Male Loneliness Trap: How to Escape.” (03/09/26)
https://www.lionsofliberty.com/episodes/ff-the-male-loneliness-trap-how-to-escape
- The Daily, 03/09/26
Source: New York Times
“Anthropic vs. the Pentagon: Inside the Battle Over A.I. Warfare.” (03/09/26)